EP 2:25 The Moral Lessons of Chemsex with Maurice

Hey y'all, I have a few goals with this podcast. One is to bring in an academic viewpoint of chemsex. I really want to look at the current research in this field and bring that to you. To get this, oftentimes we're going to have to look to the Europeans since the US is apparently pretending it doesn't exist for the most part. If you are a researcher on of chemsex and you are in the US, please reach out to me, or if you know someone, I would love to talk with You know, or the U.S. is just not understanding the meaning of chemsex, which I'm finding out a lot too. But today's discussion is with a man who is really deep into the cutting edge of chemsex research, and like a true academic, he is approaching the subject objectively and without bias. And I like that a lot. It's very interesting to me that the universities in Europe are funding chemsex research, and we say it, and we saw in Canada in an early episode that even the government is funding positions to advance chemsex issues. I'm very happy to see this. Gives me hope for the future of this epidemic. I'm grateful to use this platform to advance the dissemination of the findings. Maurice is looking at the subculture of chemsex, which is a topic that we could most likely spend many more episodes on because the culture is one that only those of us who have experience can attest to. It is unique, And oftentimes very binding. It's like a secret club that we get access to. But I know for me, when I was in that club, more often than not, I could see the pain behind the pleasure. I could sense the trauma in my user buddy's eyes. We were hurt little boys looking for a playdate. And I want to say to you that if you are negatively affected by chemsex, if you are misusing chems, please know That the culture you feel you have, where you think you have found acceptance in, is temporary and it's fleeting. There are authentically strong bonds outside of chemsex, outside of that world, waiting to hold you unconditionally, heal you, and lift you up into the best and highest existence you've ever experienced. Please know that. Hope you find this, this episode interesting, and I hope you'll download Maurice's book. It's actually free. All right, enjoy the episode. The Aftermath Podcast is an outreach tool to help men who have sex with men break free from the addictive patterns associated with chemsex, otherwise known as crystal meth or Tina. I'm your host, Dr. Dallas Bragg, a former crystal meth user, now recovery coach. Here you will find a repository of tools and resources intended to eradicate the epidemic that is plaguing our MSM population. Please note that the views expressed on this podcast are not to be taken as medical advice. Also, we will be talking about drugs and sex, so if you feel triggered to use, stop listening and contact your local Emergency system and/or your support network. Let's go. All right, welcome back to the Aftermath Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Dallas Bragg, and I am so grateful that you're here. And I want to say this every time, hopefully you won't get tired of hearing it, but very happy that you choose to listen to this podcast out of all the podcasts that you listen to. And a lot of you are listening Because our numbers keep going up. Very happy to report, uh, last month, July of 2025, was our biggest month. We had the most listeners. We, we went over 3,000, so we had 3,000 downloads. Um, comparatively, you know, if you're comparing me to Joe Rogan, then that's nothing. Probably one second for him. But, uh, comparatively speaking, it's actually not too bad for For a podcast that has such a niched-down topic. And most podcasts don't last more than 10 episodes. But we are chugging along. We are in season 2. So thank you for your support. You know, I mentioned this before and I'll mention it again. There are men in all corners of this globe who use this podcast as their resource because at where they are, They're not allowed to be gay. They're not, especially not allowed to use, to, to come out as a, as a drug user. They're in the double closet. And a lot of them also have HIV. So their lives are at danger every day. Um, and so the, the Instagram feed, the podcast, sometimes it's their only lifeline. So it's very important that we continue this podcast. It's very important that we continue this discussion everywhere. And so your support means everything to me. And I, I appreciate the currency. of algorithm boosts. So download the podcast, like the podcast, share the podcast, go to YouTube and look at the podcast. Just anything you can do along those lines is perfect. We're not here to make a bunch of money, and I don't make money here. Um, but if you want to send money, you go ahead. I'm happy to do that. Uh, but just please, you know, share the podcast with friends and family. I know a lot of you don't want to share it on your social media Um, and I, I get that too, but, but thank you. Just as a reminder, uh, there is a supplemental study guide that goes along with every episode. If you want to access that study guide, the link is always in the show notes. If you want to get that study guide to your inbox, just go to www.drdallasbragg.com, subscribe to my blog, and you'll get it to your inbox along with another free, uh, newsletter that comes out on Mondays. Both of these are tools. They're not just, here's information. It's a way to apply the information. It's journal prompts, reflective personal questions. There's action items there in there. This is something, it's a free tool that you can use just to keep your recovery fresh and take a deep dive into the subject. So today you'll want to take a deep dive and we're going to take as probably deep dive as we can. I want to keep it, um, I want to keep it very, uh, 101 today because I have somebody who goes real deep. Very intellectual man.

Um, oh, intellectual. Okay.

Yeah, very, very, very, very intellectual man. Um, you know, sometimes I'm like, I, I'm a doctor, I have a doctorate, but I don't have that kind of doctorate to do the kind of research you're doing.

Um, yeah.

Um, but there, there's a, um, a, uh, what is it called? The thing that we met through, it's a, um, what, I'm losing my train of thought.

It's a sort of European forum.

Forum. Yeah, it's an online, yeah, it's an online chemsex forum. Um, and so there's a lot of, it's a good way to meet other people in the field. It's a good way to keep in tune with recent research. And so I noticed that Maurice here, my guest today, I'm gonna let him talk. Maurice wrote a book called *The Moral Lessons of Chemsex: A Critical Approach*. There, if you can, if you're watching, he's holding it up right now. Maurice, thank you. Welcome to the after. Oh wow! There. I love that. He's very—he's displaying it.

Maurice's class is right for anyone who's a British person. Right. Yeah.

That's right.

Yeah.

I love it. Love it. Well, Maurice, you want to tell us about yourself?

Yeah. So, uh, I am an academic at the University of Manchester in the UK. Um, I have been doing this job now for about, where are we, 13 years and 13, 14 years. Um, my, my sort of earlier background, my career started off in nursing, and I am kind of in a school of nursing, um, in the university. Um, and a lot of my early clinical work was actually kind of in palliative care. Um, so dealing with quite complex emotional situations, but where in-depth communication skills really mattered. Um, and I did that job for, uh, 3 years. Um, after doing nurse training, then I worked in a hospice for 3 years. Um, and then an opportunity to do a PhD came up and my PhD was all about kind of the ethics of relationships in palliative care. Um, and then after that, I sort of, to some extent, um, I had 2 absolutely wonderful supervisors. Um, but I, I then decided sort of to run away to the surface and completely switch topics. Um, but a lot of the theoretical stuff that, um, I drew on with regards to kind of ethics and relationships and the kind of interpersonal aspects of ethics, um, and kind of producing possibilities for lives, um, which was reflected in my PhD. And that kind of comes into this book. Um, and then sort of in between, I also did quite a lot of, um, training and a master's degree in gender, sexuality, and culture. So that's sort of my academic background. Now, most of my research, I kind of describe myself as researching gay male sexual health cultures. And so I've done some stuff around chemsex, some stuff around MPOTS, and I do, hopefully doing some more research around chemsex in the relatively near future and around kind of embodiment and recovery from addiction. I listened to your episode, I could real cue my friend up on her name. Um, but hoping to do more work, um, on, on some of those aspects. Um, and also kind of just looking at, um, how we center pleasure and the ability to have pleasure, um, either without drugs or, or certainly to use drugs in a way that is pleasurable rather And is kind of, uh, dulling some pain.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and it's not always completely binary, you know, it was, there can be gradations in that. But, um, I think that's what fascinates me. And, um, overall the book itself was really meant to be, well, as I say, meant to be a deep dive into chemsex culture. Um, so I interviewed 20 guys for, uh, 2 and a half years, um, repeatedly. Um, I can't remember the exact numbers that stayed with me through full 2 and a half years. I think it was 13 stayed with me for 2 and a half years and did 3 or 4 interviews each. And 2 or 3 people did a couple of interviews and then the remainder did just one. Um, but then also I look at a lot of the culture of ChemSec and that type of things to do with novels, films, poetry. actually wasn't much poetry in the genre then, but, um, the project itself looked at kind of all those kind of cultural representations from across when they actually really started first, um, appearing. The first one being, I think 1966 is the earliest I ever found. So that's the kind of length and depth of it.

Wow. Wow. That's a lot. I, I think it's fascinating to talk about chemsex culture because this is another nuance I believe that sets the chemsex world apart from other addictions.

Mm.

Right. And again, you feel free to correct me, by the way. I love being corrected. Or, um, so you tell me. But it's just when you step into this chemsex world, it has— it does have— it is a subculture of the queer community. And I don't think you get that with heroin or alcohol. I mean, maybe sometimes with alcohol, but, you know, there is just a distinctness That, that I think makes it a little more difficult sometimes to leave because you do feel, I know for me, I felt like I had found a culture that I fit into finally. All, you know, that I searched all my life to fit in somewhere. And then this was a distinct culture that where I felt like I fit in. So that made it a little bit harder to quit. So I think it's fascinating to talk about.

Yeah. And I think that's a really, I think that's a really valid point. And I think maybe the culture. functions differently. I mean, I would say you do get drinking cultures as well, for example, you know, and I mean, sure, that's changed radically. I mean, I, I wouldn't want to speak into the American context, but drinking culture in the UK had changed quite radically in the past 20 to 30 years. It used to be very common to go for a drink after work or even to go, you know, in France it would still be relatively common to have a drink during work at lunchtime.

Mm-hmm.

Um, so there are, there, there, there's still kind of cultures around alcohol. I do take your point back on heroin. That is maybe a slightly more solitary affair to some extent. But again, I think there is also particularly feminist research at the moment that is looking at how women are coming together to have to reflect collectively on what their use means and why they're using it. And yeah, just one thing I want to mention very quickly, as you say earlier on, but Earlier on the podcast, the book is free to download for everyone. Oh yes. I just want to mention that the link will be in the thing. And, um, yeah, please do. Yeah. Uh, please do feel free to download it. Kids on.

Yes. I'm going to, yes, we're going to put the link to in the show notes. Like he said, Maurice said it's free to download. Yeah. So feel free, dive in.

Start deep.

Dive in. So you You started out with 20 guys. You, you said the 13 was consistent over 2 and a half years. These were, these were men that were, that were currently actively using?

Yeah. Um, yes, basically. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, I, I didn't, I didn't set any specific time limits. Um, I think there was one person who contacted me and said, oh, he sort of used drugs like 10 years ago. And I was like, Probably not really got an ongoing relationship with it.

Yeah.

Um, so there were some people who had tried a little bit very recently and didn't really, didn't really carry on with it. And so there was one or two people like that. Um, there were several people who their drug use changed over the time of the 2 years. Uh, and there were different patterns. So some people who started from quite high, actually quite problematic drug use.

Okay.

Um, and over the course of the 2 years either reduced or, um, stopped and became sober. And there's other people who kind of started off relatively kind of controlled in their use, kind of went up to being problematic and then actually came back down. Um, and there were, and then there were, there were other people who were just kind of relatively consistent that they were okay, um, with, um, kind of occasional drug use. Um, and then, then there were the people who, there was, there were several people who I only did one interview with. And it was quite obvious that in a couple of those cases, there was something really Um, and especially one of them. And then if people, people, just to flag that to, if people do read the book, probably the hardest bit of the book to read, and it was definitely one of the hardest interviews I've ever done in my career, is in a chapter called Trauma Tragedy.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and there's a really difficult description of, um, someone's kind of, uh, childhood abuse, not sexual abuse. Um, That, um, that is very difficult, I think, for any, and no one can read it and sort of feel happy. I mean, it's the, it's the longest quote in the book, um, because it's such a kind of difficult, complex history and you just can't cut it up.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and so there were some people who were very obviously still using, it was very problematic. They kind of blurted out their story to me and then just never came back. And maybe because it was too painful to come back, I don't know. There was definitely a couple of people where that very much felt like the case. There was another one who, and I'm sure in the book, um, who there was something that wasn't being said in the interview, but a few things that weren't being said in the interview. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe not quite the level of trauma, the, the first guy I mentioned. And, uh-huh, there was, there was also that sort of slight undercurrent sometimes with some of the participants. Um, yeah. But yeah, there was, there was a lot of, there was a lot of variety. And I think some of that variety came from specifically not recruiting via, uh, kind of medical healthcare or police services. Um, it was recruit— I did the recruitment through Grindr because at the time a lot of the research was recruiting participants from, uh, sexual health clinics where people were.

Okay.

That's where most services appear in the UK for chemsex stuff. And, and so if people have a problem, they present to a sexual health clinic about it. And so I would've got a particular slice, so I went via Grindr to you get maybe a slightly broader Trump.

Okay. Okay. Interesting. So you, you, okay. You recruited them from Grindr and then you followed them for 2 and a half years. So yeah. And the, the, the abstract of the book, so it explores how gay and bi men were, were, were some of these men identified as bi as well?

Yeah. Uh, okay. 2, 2 of them were bi.

Okay.

One very firmly identifying as bi, and the second one, I think, largely.

Uh-huh. Um, how gay and bi men's lived experiences of chemsex intersect with its cultural representations, right? It argues that while normative moral frameworks are often used to talk about chemsex, chemsex subcultures contain their own valuable moral frameworks that can provide lessons about some of the most pressing concerns of contemporary society. That's big. Can you, can you make— I don't know where to even start here, but also we want to make sure we keep this, even if it's just for me, keep it 101. Like, you know what I mean? Like, let's keep it simple. Uh, but the subculture, chemsex club cultures contain their own valuable moral frameworks. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Yeah. So, I mean, I think I would start off first with subcultures in the plural. So I was recruiting in and around Manchester in the UK, which is a mid-sized European city, um, whose population's 2, 2.5 million and the kind of metropolitan area. Um, it's It's very well known for being a quite left-wing city, a very LGBT-friendly city. We have the highest number of Pride events, I think, in the world in our city. And there's so many, we can't actually fit them all into the calendar without them clashing with each other. So literally last weekend, there were 2 at either side of the city. And then there's kind of one big main one, but there's at least, I've lost count. There's at least a dozen that kind of happen over the summer, at least.

Um, okay.

And also Manchester is well known for its kind of, uh, clubbing and rave culture. It's just a little bit like Berlin in that respect. Maybe for American listeners, a little bit more like Chicago that has a kind of very long established, um, club rave kind of community-driven culture. And one of the things I think is that's prominent in Manchester is a slightly more cooperative, less competitive approach to chemsex and subcultures. So when I'm in London, I note that people are often quite cutthroat. And I remember being in a club once And I describe it as people were looking to be looked at, but not by you. And it's if you smile, if you smiled at someone on a dance floor, you're keeping my most people on MDMA still, right? So usually you're a bit happy. In this London, this is many years ago with a friend in this London club, which called XXL, which doesn't exist anymore for. views or even, um, but you would smile at someone on the dance floor and they would just glower back at you because they were not the person you wanted them to be looking at. Manchester is completely different. So there's a much more friendlier vibe to the city.

I see.

Um, and I think that some of that then feeds into some people's chemsex experiences. It's also a smaller city, so to some extent Bad word gets around about people if you are a bad host or a bad guest quite quickly. So I think some of that also plays in. And Manchester is also a very ethnically diverse city. It's probably after London, it is the, you know, we have the most number of languages spoken in the UK in our city. And I think that possibly rivals the world as well. So we, it's a very diverse city. It's a very left-wing city. It's a city where the cooperative movement was born. It's quite anti-capitalist. And I get into its kind of dynamics later in the book. And so the chemsex culture in Manchester, to say, like, you know, how it teaches about modern, challenge some modern aspects. I find in Manchester at least, and some of my participants talked about this, that They didn't really, if they didn't have a lot of money, they didn't really need to worry about spending money on drugs. They were just kind of, the drugs would find them, but not in a way that was kind of coercive. And again, I know in America, I'm certain in some other countries, there can be class and racial hierarchies that are going on and with kind of drug provision and space provision. Yeah. And that just wasn't has evident in Manchester. And when I was doing fieldwork, um, it was much more cooperative and people were like, yeah, come to our party. If you don't have any drugs, it's okay. Maybe you can chip in 10 quid, but it's, it's quite a different vibe. Um, and there's maybe a less competitive nature to how desire operates, if that makes sense.

Mm-hmm. So, okay. So what I'm hearing then, I guess, is even though the, you know, when I hear about chemsex culture, there's so many similarities too, right? All around the world, right? I mean, there, there's, there's certain things you can say and everybody, no matter where you are, you, you know what you're talking about. But there's, it seems to be a nuance based on the, the geographical area. So I would say. Right. So I have heard, like, in New York City, let's say someone told me that the more affluent gay part of the city is much more siloed and closed off in terms of their chemsex culture, getting into a party. But then somewhere in the Bronx or Harlem or something like that, that there's more of an openness of everybody's welcome. So, so I guess that it sounds like that's something that we see everywhere.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and I think what I would also say is, I mean, there might be some Manchester listeners and they might go, oh, hang on a minute. What about this area? area here where there's been rapid gentrification. What we say, well, that wasn't so much an issue when I was doing the interview 6, 7 years ago. Um, when I started off, I think, so I think maybe some of the distinctions I'm making are breaking down a little bit.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and certainly post-COVID, there was a huge move of particularly people from London to Manchester. And that has pushed up property prices, pushed up rent prices. And then the people who have more capital have more power. And if you rewind pre-COVID, it, that wasn't, there wasn't the same gap in wealth in Manchester, I don't think. So yeah, I see that change. You literally start to walk around cities and see that changing.

Mm-hmm.

Um, with very exclusive high-rise buildings going up, um, that are very obviously designed, both the area and the buildings, for a very specific class of people.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and I think that's, that's going to be a problem in Manchester overall. Um, and just relates to Chemsex stuff, I think it might start filtering into the Chemsex culture. Um, if those, if the social gap carries on widening, um, and it certainly has widened in the past few years, I don't want to deny that.

Mm-hmm. Okay. So, so Manchester has its own little subculture, but what about, so what, what are we talking about in terms of valuable moral frameworks that exist in these subcultures, these chemsex subcultures?

Yeah. So some of the things I talk about in the book are about how bodies relate to each other and, and maybe in a way that isn't entirely reliant on having to constantly talk and put it into language. So I'm quite interested in how, um, in those moments in Chemsex parties, and this is maybe a slightly idealized version of it, but In those moments of chemsex parties where people are actually having sex and there is that kind of, people aren't on their phones and, uh-huh, and there's the sounds and the feelings of connection happening.

Mm-hmm.

Um, that we don't have to try and fit into this irrational box of language and say, I am a gay man who likes this and does that. Um, so I think there are moments where it can teach us about how bodies connect with each other, um, in ways that break some of those linguistic, um, sort of straitjackets to some extent. So that's where I start.

What is a ling—

Sorry, what?

Okay. What is a linguistic straitjacket?

So, so lots of these, you know, lots of these stories that we constantly tell about, tell ourselves about ourselves and talk to other people about ourselves. Um, I would kind of— a lot of it would be kind of identity politics or, um, how we value the self in relation to how we look or what clothes we can have. Yeah, exactly. So there's, um, there's a really good example, um, in the book where— I'm sure it made it into the book, um, where one of my participants talks about saying the Chemsex cult, the, the kind of Chemsex, um, sort of room, you know, in kind of the front room or whatever.

Right.

Um, the, the lights are off, the curtains are closed, and no one's talking about work. No one is a lawyer or a barrister or a dustbin man or a refuse worker, or you're those kind of identities have sort of dropped away. Uh, and I think that, I think I go back to my previous point about Manchester at the time, certainly not being quite so siloed class-wise. I think that's less so in the past few years. Um, but I think there's important ways of thinking about how connection occurs across those identities, social Boundaries and straitjackets that very often we only mix in circles where we are comfortable about who we are as a status. And rather than as a body that can experience pleasure.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, chem— so chemsex removes the barriers that we face in regular society in terms of how I look and how much money I make. And, you know, all, you know, it gives you, it levels the playing field, I guess you could say.

I think it can do. Um, I mean, I, I think, I think there are, you know, you can look for the news and you can find some egregious examples of particularly white men abusing Black men in America. And so I think it can do. Um, and I think that gap is wider in places like London where the, the, the financial capital divide is wider. If you can afford to buy property in London, um, you are, or you can afford a, a space where you live on your own that has space for a sex party, you are instantly in like the top 5, 10%, uh, capital-wise.

Mm-hmm.

Um, that is much less the case in Manchester. And although I will keep on repeating, I feel like changing, right?

It could be changing. Yeah. I mean, I think that's the part of the addiction too, is, right, it's like this, this sudden relief of I'm, I'm equal to everyone finally, right? We're like, we're supposed to be, we're, we're supposed to be equal, you know, we're supposed to fight for equality in this culture, in the queer culture. And we're, you know, we're all Let's all hold hands and everything, but, but there's obviously structure and hierarchy. And so I think part of the reason it's harder to break free is like, this is my one chance to feel, forget what, where I am on the totem pole.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I think that absolutely can feed into elements of addiction that if there is, if that is your only kind of place to experience deep connection with people, um, then it's going to be incredibly alluring.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and I don't think we can get away from the, the, the downsides of, of, of Temsex and particularly the kind of things like the sleep loss. Um, which, you know, anyone who goes a whole night without sleep will feel bad. Someone who goes 2 nights without sleep will feel awful. Someone who goes 3 nights without sleep is probably gonna be psychotic.

book.

Um, and so I don't think you can get away from that. Um, but I, what I would say is that if you are in a city like Manchester, which is generally a lot more liberal, um, and you can have friends outside of that, and again, I talk about this in the book, there were some examples where people had friends out— outside or kind of adjacent to the chemsex culture, who they could speak to about feeling a bit tired or feeling a bit down. And those bad feelings didn't entirely have to reside within the self and be dealt with by the self. They could be shared and reflected upon and not eat you up. I think if you are in a situation where you can't be open about what you did at the weekend, Um, they don't need one.

Okay.

Um, then that's much harder. And there's a paper that I have as well called Support, Care, and Peer Support in Health and Social, Health and Social Care in the Community at Gambling. It's open access. I talk a lot more about that, about kind of the, the real kind of protective effect of peer support. Um, but the problem being that those networks can be a bit fragile. So I sort of critique that idea as peer support of being the answer, because if your peers then run into problems, um, then things can start falling apart very quickly. Um, and I think the British government, at least for the last 10 years or so, has looked for very cheap solutions and peer support is a very cheap solution. It's a great solution as well.

Yep.

But it's not a replacement for statutory, free, high-quality psychological support. Um, yep. Yeah. And that's, that's why I did writing paper.

Okay, good. Yeah, I mean, we're doing that too in the US. Peer support is a big rising, it's a rising, um, thing to do. You know, I thought about being, becoming a peer support specialist, but a certified peer support specialist, but again, like you're saying, you can only support to a certain level, right? It does, it's got to help though, because there are many men out there who are doing it and not sharing it. It's, it's their secret, right? Their family doesn't know.

100%. 100%. Yeah. I mean, I was the only person they spoke to in depth about it, like regularly. Um, and so for some people that served as a real, a very valuable process. Some people did have that, that other social network, but some people, I was that person who they could actually talk to about it. And for some of them that meant they did change the behavior. And I was, I was absolutely not applying any kind of, um, you know, kind of health-based approach, like motivational Instagram and things like that. I was just asking about what they were doing. And, but even then, that just giving people that space to talk, um, and some people found, um, really valuable. Obviously some people didn't, or not valuable enough to think them back. That seems to be—

Yeah.

But I mean, I think in a couple of those cases there was, there was some really deep, um, some really deep trauma, um, that was obviously just Yeah. Too hard to come back to. Um, yeah, stop in time. Yeah. They weren't ready to.

Mm-hmm. I'm sure. Yeah. I mean, for the, for the listeners, you know, we, you've heard this before, but it's, it's worth saying again, is that getting this, getting it out into the light is so helpful. Even if it's a craving, you know, something to have somebody to talk to, to, to be open about it. Um, there's a lot of stigma in our community. There's a lot of stigma in the general society anyway. Um, so I, I get that you're kind of scared to, to say anything, but even if you just have one friend or one family member, someone that you can talk to, that you can get it out, right? Um, or if you have no one else, shoot me a DM and tell me everything in there, right? I mean, a lot of people, a lot of people write me and they, they get finished writing and they're like, you know, it's just felt so cathartic just to get this on out to somebody who understands where I've been too. I mean, that is the, that is the beauty of peer support.

Oh, 100%. 100%. Um, and I think it's, peer support is so valuable. Um, and you know, if anyone who's listening to this who has friends who are struggling, absolutely. It's, there's, you know, it's the same with grief. Like sometimes people don't know what to say when someone's had someone die. Yeah. That's fine. You can, you can message someone and say, I don't know what to say, but I'll listen.

That's right. That's, that's right.

It's not always, you know, this, this is why when I, my experience in palliative care, actually, like, there's no good thing to say when I've literally just sent that. Well, this is very brief anecdote. There's no good way of explaining to your wife that she's just gone home.

Yeah.

And then her husband has just hemorrhaged to death.

Oof.

There is no good way. There is no good way.

Yeah.

It's just not, it's just, no. But to say nothing and to not acknowledge the existence of this thing that has just happened will be even worse. Um, so if you know someone's struggling, that's, that's fine. Just drop a message. So, hey, how are you? And I will do this in terms of my with my friends, I'll send them and say, hey, how are you? Um, are you— I know you've not been doing too well. No obligation to reply. Like, just reply, don't reply, it's absolutely fine. I just wanted to know, let you know there's someone here. And sometimes I will know that I'm not their number one go-to. Um, but I will also say, like, I can be your backup. Like, you know, send me a message of things about— I'm not an emergency service, but I'll see your message, I'll read your message, I'll reply. Like, um, so yeah, I think peer support is so, so important. Um, but also, I think this was something I've been discussing with people in Berlin quite recently, actually, um, and peer support networks and trying to set them up that actually good, um, peer support networks and well-functioning ones. As, as gay men, we have a history of this. I mean, I'm just a little bit too young to be in that history. Um, but the AIDS— my, my uncle isn't— my uncle's, um, gay and his partner's gay. And they lived through the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Um, and they had to learn to care for each other. And peer support didn't just mean a person A caring for person B. Peer support was a web.

Mm-hmm.

And also, I think in the current, if we're kind of using these to step in the place of clinical services, we need to make sure that people have, um, the people that are running these peer support services are, um, Getting access to supervision and care themselves. Um, and we can't just have all those emotions going in one direction from the person needing support to this person getting the support, the person, sorry, the person giving the support. There needs to be something for the person doing the support. Otherwise, that's, that's what burnout's made of. Um, you can get away with it for a few weeks or a few months.

Yes.

Um, but most people's chemsex doesn't start and finish in the space of weeks and months.

Right, right, exactly.

So yeah, yeah. For me, that's, like I say, there's a lot of, um, really interesting discussion about how to do peer support in sustainable ways in Berlin that I'm quite interested in. But again, that probably rears up. Yeah.

We digress. Um, okay, so this, this, this moral subculture we're going back— I'm going back to this moral framework. So this, the idea that, you know, the, the linguistic— I'm still going back to your phrasing here— the linguistic straitjacket of the, the stories we tell ourselves about what we look like and who we are. And, um, yeah, all that stuff goes away. But also you were talking about how communication-wise You can sit together and both be scrolling on Grindr and watching porn. And that's a bonding for you because it, because it's true. I mean, a lot of chemsex is the, it's the, what is the sensory part of it?

Yeah.

It's the watching of the porn. It's the hearing of it. It's the scrolling and looking at the profiles and sending the pictures. I mean, That is a lot of chemsex. And so, you know, there's a lot of people who get, who show up to fuck, right? And they're going to get mad. You know, I hear this a lot. They get upset at somebody who just sits on their phone. But a lot of times that's, that's the bonding, I'm guessing. Is that, is that what you found?

Um, I mean, it's not my argument. Um, I, I get, I do get what you're saying though.

Um, is that, that, yeah, because What were you saying then? What were you— what did you find?

For me, and I mean, this is where then I definitely come into— like, in other than to me, definitely comes into the book. So, um, when I was doing my, um, master's degree in gender, sexuality, and culture, I did a module on, um, film and queer cinema. Okay. Um, and I will— I'm paraphrasing what she said. But Jackie Stacy, who's actually very well thanked in the book, um, she said to me something along the lines of, um, you can sort of just about write about film, like from a visual point of view, but actually you've got really great advice about music. I thought, oh, okay. And so there's this whole chapter about music, uh, chemsex as music and kind of the musicality of bodhisattvas. And that just as you would kind of, just as music produces certain, it like music penetrates the body in ways that you, you can't stop. If you go to a concert, you are hearing things that you, you, you can't, it, it goes into your ears in ways that you can't control. You can't close your, you can't close your ears. You can close your eyes. You can move away from a person touching me, but you can't.

Yeah.

Not really effective preservatives. Um, and that's what I found really fascinating about that kind of the commu— the unavoidably communal aspect of chemsex when people are actually having sex. Um, right. Okay. And the, the sounds of it and maybe also including the pornography as well in the background. Yeah, I would, I would absolutely include that. Um, I think. If everybody, and this is actually where I'd maybe start drawing a bit of a line, if everybody's just sat on their phone being this individual little desiring object, reaching out to other individual desiring objects on the other end of the phone, actually for me, that is not what I'm trying to get at with the, the, the moral lesson that chemsex might be able to teach us. What I'm trying to argue is that there are sometimes elements of how chemsex subcultures function that are much more communal and are quite good examples of communal practices.

I see.

So yeah, and I told— I, I don't necessarily— chapter 6, I do talk about— I don't talk about apps, but I do talk about there is an element of chemsex subcultures where it can sometimes be very much one individual competing with another. which is very much this kind of capitalist framework of competition.

Yeah.

And individuals in it for themselves. And that is totally there, um, in chemsex subcultures. I personally find it to be there less than Manchester.

Uh-huh.

More in places like London and Paris. Um, and maybe less in Berlin, which again is about a kind of left-wing City. So I do think like the broader sociocultural, political ways that a city exists do sort of influence and shape then how people act in their sexual subcultures.

Sure, sure. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Okay. So then what were your favorite findings then? I mean, I know there's a lot here, but what were some of the— oh, definitely.

I'm definitely sorry. My phone's going on. No, I can definitely tell you that photo. So again, let me just get the exact name right. And so my brain's just gone blank for a second. Oh God, I've really lost them. Um, most of the time it's disappeared. Gartenberg, it's John Gartenberg. Um, right, so My favorite bit of, actually one of the loveliest relationships I developed through doing the book. There is a film archivist called John Ratenberg in New York, and he knew Warren Sondert, who was a young filmmaker in New York. in the 1960s. I think he was 18 or 19 in 1966.

Okay.

Just, just after university, doing filmmaking. And there is a film called Amphetamine. Um, so 1966 is pretty much the earliest moment where injectable amphetamines were widely available in America. You saw that kind of, you saw the supply increase in the '50s and then it's well established by the time you get to the '60s.

Okay.

And it's also pretty much exactly the same time that the same process happened with filmmaking, that an individual being able to have a camera and make a film existed in the '50s, but gradually it became more affordable. And these 2 things kind of collide together in a show called Warhol and Sandberg.

Okay.

Um, and he makes this 10-minute film with, um, a lady called Wendy Apple. Um, and he's very much contemporary of Andy Warhol, all in the kind of same social circle. Everybody remembers Andy Warhol, everybody remembers Warhol and Sandberg. Um, but he produced this film that, um, has the Supremes as the backing track with Baby Love and— ah, what's the other track that's on it? My brain's— yeah, read the book, by the way, I write about it. But, um, and it's this really sensual piece of art cinema that lasts 10 minutes. You see the men injecting, and—

Ah.

But then also you see them kissing, You don't see them fucking, but what is really interesting is they kind of like, they move in and out of socializing with friends in what just looks like a sit around post-dinner party. But then also there's these, you wouldn't know this unless you, unless John Garpenberger told you.

Yeah.

Um, there's these blurry images of, uh, Times Square, which obviously used to be your kind of New York utopia. And, and it intersects between the two. So you have this kind of blurry gay utopia, then coming back to images of men pissing, blurry gay utopia, injecting, Supremes music on top underneath. And the thing I find really interesting about this is obviously it was still blindingly illegal to be gay in the 1960s. This is 2 years before Stonewall.

Right.

Um, so you hadn't— other bits and bobs had kicked off in America in a couple of years preceding Stonewall, but it was, you know, to, to film this and then to screen it. Um, and then at its screening, um, it got into, um, it got reviewed. I forget the name of the publication now, but again, it's in the book. Um, and it was called Beauty— the, the, the guy James, I can't say anymore. Uh, called it beautiful and pure. And I was like, interesting. Oh, exactly. How interesting that. And I think, yes, very often we kind of have these, um, discussions about chemsex being the biggest crisis since the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Yeah. Yeah.

Uh, and we bring a lot of the traumatic, tragic, stigmatizing metaphors And I, again, I write about this in the book with Peter— oh, names are falling outta my head. Peter Staley explicitly was a very active member of ACT UP New York. And then after you get combination therapy coming out in the late '90s, early 2000s, he then explicitly says he's going to use the same tactics, the same imagery of kind of shock tactics to get action for HIV/AIDS, to shock people and stigmatize meth use. It's really clear. And, and one of my favorite academic authors, Dion Kagan, he writes a book called Positive Images. cause this to re-crisis. So I think there's some really interesting representations that exist pre-AIDS crisis. And I think we've done maybe sometimes a bad job culturally of saying, well, what were the care practices of HIV/AIDS? What did we learn about that? And how can we bring those into chemsex rather than the, just these kind of fearful um, narratives. And a lot of, a lot of HIV stuff was also about sex-positive things and not shaming. And we haven't necessarily always done a great job of bringing that into chemsex discussion. It's been quite medicalized. We've let a medical perspective take over that narrative. So I, I find that kind of pre- and post-AIDS represen— Pre-imposed representations of chemsex. Very fascinating. The best one he winds on about, and I think that is my favorite bit of the book.

Hmm. Interesting. I love that. Yeah. You had fun doing this, huh?

I loved it. I mean, that was, uh, yeah. And, and I mean, I, and I have to absolutely say there is, um, uh, John Garstenberg was absolutely key in, um, in giving me access to film and giving me some really key, um, uh, information about it as well. And then also Michael Batteridge helped me with some of the musical analysis and, and I'll speak for Air Jarman from the University of Birmingham. Like, this is, this is a book that was written by me, but has an army of people behind it.

Yeah.

Um, but John Duffall was absolutely Wherever they talk, how people are incredibly generous to you.

What surprised you the most?

Oh, you come up with good questions. What surprised me the most? Um, so I think one of the most surprising things was, um, there was a, uh, display board on, in the main gay district of Manchester, Canal Street. Um, and on that, um, display board was a series of leaflets and things, and almost all of them were about how bad it was to be gay in some way, like abuse or trauma or addiction. Or it's like, that, that's not my experience of homosexuality. But it's not my experience of homosexuality. I mean, like, to give you a very brief overview, I, you know, I didn't have necessarily a really great early few years. I was in a very evangelical church, and they were a bit of a punt to me. Um, and left after I was 19. Um, and needed to do some work on myself after that. Um, but I was like, otherwise, actually being gay has been quite a fun thing. I would much rather be gay than straight. Um, and there's Jane Ward who has a brilliant book called The Tragedy of Heterosexuality. Um, and she says, actually heterosexuality, if it was really problematic cultural way of setting up sexuality where men have a lot of power, very little responsibility, treat women in, I mean, not all men, but there is a culture of really badly treating women, even in quite subtle ways about domestic labor and childcare and things like that.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and so you, Yeah, I just thought this doesn't reflect like queer joy. I know there's queer trauma and sorrow. That's absolutely there. But even, you know, if you speak to, speak to my uncle and from his crisis, he will talk about great times going out clubbing in the middle of the AIDS crisis.

Mm-hmm.

And I think many people would talk about that. Um, and the solidarity that was found. And I don't think we know, even, even in the problematic times of Chemsex, I think it, I think it's become really hard to talk about the joy and the pleasure, um, even of caring for each other. Um, and because there's such a stigma on talking about doing chemsex that it becomes really difficult to represent it as a pleasurable thing. Any aspect of it is pleasurable. Um, So yeah, I, but I think that, that, that kind of poster board was probably one of the most surprising things for me. It literally stopped me in my tracks, sort of thing. So very interesting and probably a great experience.

So someone, someone looking, someone looking into the culture who isn't gay, maybe, you know, some hetero— heterosexual, they, their, their idea of being gay may be What, what they're seeing in those leaflets, right? They're depressed, they're sexual, they're, they're hypersexual, they're depressed, they're diseased, they're addicted, you know, all of, all of that.

I mean, I think Berlin is doing, I, I can't rate much Berlin because I've been going to that city for 20 years and they are doing some really innovative work that doesn't kind of frame chemsex as dutiful, doesn't frame it as tragic and pathological, but tries to look at the problems that it may create, but why those problems are maybe exacerbated. So issues around class and poverty. But then also there's some really great spaces in Berlin to be gay in ways that don't require drugs. So there are community spaces and some of those community spaces host courses to help people access pleasure without drugs.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and I think to just focus on the pathology and the problems of being gay and to just focus on the problems of chemsex leaves us quite vulnerable. And I think maybe repeats some of the things that everyone was so pissed off about in the '80s and '90s. And about the representations of, of gay men, um, as this kind of terrible, um, life to live. And maybe we haven't shed that properly yet and we aren't prepared to always stand up and talk about queer joy. And then also the, the real complexity between those two, because it's totally possible for one person to do exactly the same drugs at exactly the same party. Um, and another person and then have wildly different outcomes. Things like precarity of employment. If you fall unwell on a Monday and you can't work and you've lost £100, $100 and you're poor, that's gonna impact you a lot more. So yeah, there's, yeah. And some of the book is trying to poke at that complexity kind of consistently.

Interesting. Okay. Okay. Well, what do you want us, if I download this and read it, which I haven't read it yet, but I definitely plan to, what do you want us to walk away with?

I would say to realize there is a long view on chemsets and that long view has changed radically. You know, we're, we're all, we are sort of at least 60 years into having something that looks pretty much like chemsex. Well, I will, I would say roughly the 1960s is where it would start.

Yeah.

Um, and that's changed from being a culture that was represented by gay men to gay men without really much mediation from medics or psychologists or psychiatrists.

Yeah.

Or police. Or they were just trying to get on with it. And we've shifted to a lot of the representations being ones that are about crimes committed, ones that are about the health consequences. And I think I'm trying to say, yeah, those things are important to talk about. Patrick Strudwick, beautiful writer, amazing journalist, and writes in ways I could only hope to ever write. And about the family's deep trauma of losing a son who died to chemsex. Has he written about the pleasures and the joys of that? No. Would he probably even find people who would be willing to go on record about that?

Yeah.

But yeah, possibly not. So I think there's something deeply ingrained in our current, in the past 15, 20 years that prevent us talking about the pleasure of it. And I completely realize that for some people that pleasure is not accessible or is very dangerous. Um, yeah. And addiction is, you know, I, I, let's not jump, I, I just wanna give a personal experience so that people could identify. But, you know, addiction is a, is a very clear thing for some people where a drug or particular substance or particular behavior becomes an extremely destructive coping mechanism. You know, probably shouldn't even really be given the word coping mechanism in some cases. And I would never, and I hope that I don't. dismiss that in the book. I just try and draw us back to a longer view of how chemsex might be able to be spoken about and represented elsewhere. And that some of those experiences are still ones that are alive today. Um, you know, some people very much were doing chemsex in a way that looked much more like Warren Sondert's film. And so that's what I try and sort of move between. And the first half of the book is largely the restricted ways I think chemsex has become represented. And, and then the second half of the book is really trying to look beyond those restrictions or open things back out. That's the kind of narrative I— Yeah.

Yeah.

That's an extraordinary answer.

It is. Yeah. Yeah. So then what's next? If it's a long, if you wanted to take a long view, what do you foresee coming up next?

So my current project, and I am extremely, I mean, genuinely, please do contact me. My name is Very easy to Google Maurice Naggington. Literally, I'm the only one. You Google Maurice Naggington, University of Manchester, you will find me. But my new project is about art and chemsex, basically. So I am wanting to understand why and how people are representing it now.

Yeah.

So the book really only looked at historic examples of artistic representations. And I didn't speak to the artist doing that. Warren Sombert died in '94, I think. And, and then I didn't speak to any of the playwrights about some of the plays I write about. So I didn't speak to the artist and I certainly didn't speak to the artist when they were producing the art or had recently produced it. So I'm really interested in learning about why and how people are representing Chemsex through the arts. That can be any type of artistic practice. It can be film, it can be music, it could be material-based things, it could be poetry. I am bad at poetry analysis, worse than my film analysis, but I would try damn hard. But yeah, that's my current, that's my current project.

Interesting.

And if people are doing that, I can travel internationally and I will travel internationally to assume.

Okay.

Only the budget, and it's only just, it's only just started. So, um, okay, that will be amazing. And I would say it's, it could be just your own individual artistic practice, or a practice that you are wanting to exhibit, or a practice that you are doing professionally. So someone like Edvard, um, don't think that your art isn't good enough.

Right.

Or that it would have to necessarily be public. I'm quite open to working with different levels of disclosure and stuff. And then the other project I really want to do some work on, which I mentioned earlier, was looking at how to help people after they are through That initial stage of moving away from addiction. Um, so I think experiencing sexual pleasure, you know, in the days and weeks after you stopped using the substance that you're addicted to is either not possible or a bad idea.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But Once you get into months down the line, and certainly once you get into years down the line, there are very few people offering actual structured strategies that bring people together to discuss it and bring people together to experience some form of bodily pleasure. I'm not necessarily talking about sex in the kind of fucking sucking way.

Sure.

But there's very little. And I say there's some work going on in Berlin and I am extremely interested in learning about that and kind of piloting it in, in the UK. But again, if anyone's doing all sort of work, gimme a shout cuz, um, it's very much not—

Yeah.

All up for grabs and development at the moment. Um, because again, like my book is very much about, I, I, the book, I think on page 5, I say is neither for nor against chemsex. But you can't fuck around with the idea that actually some people Have to be against chemsets on a kind of individual experience level, 'cause it nearly destroyed them or killed them or was destroying their life. Right, right, right. But in the, I, I have a friend who hasn't had sex for 7 years.

Mm-hmm. Right.

And sexual health services think he's doing fine 'cause he's not getting STIs. mental health stuff. I think he's doing fine because he's not using any drugs. He's not doing fucking fine. He's literally not fucking fine. That's right. That's right. So, yeah, and I don't think services in the UK have addressed that at all. I wouldn't want to comment on America.

Um, but yeah, I mean, not, not a lot, you know. I mean, that's, that's one thing. Um, I've had Mel McCracken on, uh, with No Matter What Recovery, and Paulo, who's the owner Um, they're doing, they just came out with a booklet, right? And, and Mel's a sex therapist.

Yes, I think I listened to that episode. Yeah. Which I thought was amazing. I learned so much.

Yeah. Yeah. They're, they're doing a lot of good work with, with that in terms of the arousal template and, you know, the sexual healing and there's, there's a lot there. But the thing is, you know, for me is like you said, I hear from guys all the time who said it's been 7, 8, 9 years. I have. never had sex. Yeah. And I just, you know, and yeah.

And I mean, Mel's work sounded brilliant. Um, but the gap in the UK is then actually taking it forward and going, we need to bring people together and we need to give people access to their bodies and feeling safe about their body again. Right. And yes, that is, that's what's happening on this course in Berlin that I found so fascinating. Um, nice. And I think that's where I would like to take my work because my work is very much neither for nor against chemsex, but—

Right.

I do, it's kind of for pleasure really, my work, if it's, if it's gonna be described as anything. Um, and I think I've spent a long time dicking around in films and novels. And not necessarily doing that much that necessarily benefits people. Um, so anyway, I do still have that kind of mercy element to me of wanting to actually do something direct. So I think that's probably going to be my next— I literally am working on developing that project now and you never know when people will and won't fund you, but, um, it's definitely what I want to game.

Yeah. Great. I love it. I love it. All right, Maurice, thank you. Thank you for your work. Thank you for your research. Thank you for approaching it in such a, not a for, you know, just a neutral way too, because that's what I'm, you know, this, this whole season has been about harm reduction. This whole season has been about learning about chemsex from all angles, right?

Yeah.

Uh, and just it, and there, there's a such thing as chemsex use or chemsex misuse. Right. And it's the misuse when it's negatively affecting your life. Those are the people that the podcast is helping, right? Or if you're right, if you're using chemsex and you think it may begin to negatively affect your life, how do I, how can I tell? How can I, you know, see? So, but I want to, I want to make sure that everybody in the, in the chemsex world is seen. So I think that your, your book complements that. And I appreciate, and your research does too. And I appreciate it very much.

Yeah. And I mean, I just, I really appreciate, um, the interview. Um, and hopefully, hopefully the book, um, is— the book's been written in a style that I hope is accessible for pretty much anyone who, if you've done any type of degree, you should find it pretty manageable with.

Um, yeah.

Any kind of product degree you'd be fine with. But there's one slight, um, exception that is the final chapter. The final chapter is possibly more written for academics. What I would say is some people have jumped in at like chapter 3 and then said to me, oh, I don't understand this word. I don't understand that word. I'm like, well, I know you've jumped into chapter 3 though, haven't you? So I'll explain that word. I expect you to be in chapter 1. Then I go through it again, you'll be in chapter 2.

Right.

So I would just say to people, it might be tempting to pick out a chapter that just sounds really interesting and great, do that if you want. But if you find that there's some slight technical terms that you're not getting, chances are I have actually talked about them early on. And with it being an electronic book, you can search for those words if you want. But hopefully, if you start at chapter 1, it should be relatively stepwise things through conceptually. Through to the end of chapter 6. Chapter 7 is then quite a rapid incline, but again, hopefully concepts are laid out in ways that everybody can get it, but it's not necessarily a flick through every page. Yeah, a minute. You might have to sit a little bit longer with chapter 7, but you should be able to get through it.

Yeah. Great. Good. And again, if you listen to Maurice, if you want to participate in his current study on art and chemsex, please reach out to him. Um, yeah, so I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you, if you get— download the book and you have questions, send them to Maurice.

Oh yeah, also join in. Feedback is also incredibly valuable. Feedback. Um, I say this regularly, I mean, I, you know, I do believe in what I wrote, but there comes a point where your writing has to be set free from you. And if you have something you really disagree with and you want to write to me about that, do. It's fine. It's not a problem. I am not my book.

Um, right. That's right. I like that.

I welcome kind of feedback, good and bad. I mean, you know, don't just swear at me in the email because that won't impress me. Um, but you know, if you say, I really disagree with this and I think this sounds like it'd be great, disagree with me, that's fine. Yeah, I would be interested and I actually quite like disagreement. I'm quite robust ego. So yeah, please do contact me. I would really welcome anyone emailing questions about either the book or any of my other research that's gone on. I genuinely, extremely welcome.

Thank you. Thank you. Love it. All right guys, hope you enjoyed this episode. A little bit different today, but very valuable. And we'll see you next week.